


Like a Pebble to a Lake

by BeautifullyLovely



Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, The Bane Chronicles - Sarah Rees Brennan & Cassandra Clare & Maureen Johnson
Genre: Implied/Referenced Character Death, Multi, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 06:28:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5857687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautifullyLovely/pseuds/BeautifullyLovely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day, a man meets another man. The exact when and where are irrelevant. What matters is this: that man, Magnus, tells the first man a story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Pebble to a Lake

**Author's Note:**

> This is a weird little fic, because it is Magnus/OC, but that's kind of used as an excuse for opening up Magnus Bane and Malec feelings. So...read at your own risk of the dreaded OC.

“Are you going to stay for breakfast?” The man asks.

He normally wouldn't ask, preferring his lovers to whisk themselves away in the night. He'd rather that not happen yet, though, if at all. The person basking in the morning light of his window--smooth skin, striking eyes, a gorgeous way of twisting in the night--has a story, a good story. He can tell, and part of him can't help but want to hear it.

He sits up in the half-made bed, stretching his arms. Magnus appreciates the way the muscles tremble under the man’s skin.

“I don't drink blood.” Magnus says, gazing out the window, the sun warm on his face. He’s wrapped in one of the bed’s silk sheets and is propped up on the small plush seating area under the window. His body aches in the way it only does after good sex, and there are no worries pressing into his mind. He feels content.

“Wine then, I can partake if I pace myself.”

Magnus turns from the window and back to his companion, a grin slowly making its way across his face. “You take me for a morning drinker?”

“I take you for a man who enjoys the pleasantries of life when they present themselves.” The man says.

“And you?” Magnus returns. “You are one of those pleasantries?”

The man walks over to where Magnus is sitting, a slight prowl to his step. Magnus only sits there, smirking back. His eyes don't get wider and his face doesn't flush, but neither does he back away or try to force upon the man his own pride. Indeed, he seems perfectly fine with letting good things come to him, and does not seem to be one that would suffer if they passed him by.

The man places a kiss across Magnus’ cheek, a soft, slow press, meant to linger. “If you want, I shall be that.”

Magnus eyes the man. He is open and he is wary all at once, and the man must know what made him that way.

They pull out a cork on one of the man’s many wines. He has been saving this particular brand for centuries, never finding a good enough time to use it. Now is not anything momentous, just a beautiful man in his bed, nothing too new, but he feels the need to open it in celebration regardless.

“I haven't had the best track record with vampires.” Magnus says as he takes a sip of the wine. The man watches the way he savors it and doesn't take the drink for granted.

“Really?” The man asks. “Tell me more.”

So Magnus does. He tells him about Axel and the vampires of Paris, how he circumvented them with a few well placed words and a balloon, while taking for himself a runaway queen.

“A balloon!” The man exclaims, and watches as his lover smiles a proud smile.

“Yes, I had summoned it from all across the city. It was rather difficult. I had to land in a river of water for all my troubles, but I got a kiss out of the debacle.” He wets his lips, and the man stares.

“Of course,” Magnus says, his eyes turning for second toward downcast. “I had not given the deserved consideration to my servants at the time, and they had been taken. I have their death forever on my shoulders.”

The man fingers his glass in thought. It is pleasant to see that his lover has a kind core, but he wishes it had been revealed in a less morose way, for Magnus’ sake.

The man knows greatly about past regrets, for he has been alive a long time. He leans closer to Magnus, pressing their shoulders to one another's. Magnus accepts this bout of affection, even if he keeps his eyes away.

The man listens to the tale of Camille Belcourt, who tricked and schemed her way into the hearts and minds of everyone around her. Magnus describes her as beautiful, a truly terrible beauty. She seems like a vile woman to the man, and he tells Magnus this.

“Oh, she was.” He says easily, as if it is an undeniable truth. “But she was amazing all the same.”

He tells the man of the time Camille tried to trick a young boyfriend of his, a shadowhunter.

“A shadowhunter?” The man asks, for the first time unsure of his lover.

Magnus only smiles, his eyes full of stories. Good stories. “They’re not all terrible.”

This, though, this time of trickery and broken hearts, is a patch of bad in all the good. “None of the truly good lives are without some pain.” The man says. It’s a saying that sounds good as a theory in his mind, but less so when used out loud. It is harder, maybe even harsh, when spoken.

Magnus looks the man, and suddenly his eyes are very much alight. “I agree.” He says. “Though I doubt I would have before.”

“Tell me of your nephilim.” The man says, and Magnus is only happy to oblige.

He tells the man of the good times and the bad, their marriage and the nephilim's siblings. Their child--theirs, plural, despite the many years that have now passed since the father’s death--who is of the name Max.

“He’s off on his own adventures now.” Magnus says, his eyes sweet but his mouth tight.

“Are you worried for him?”

“Everyday.” Magnus replies.

In return, the man tells Magnus of his own loves--a lovely girl taken from the world too early, a man who was unnecessarily harsh and unnecessarily kind in turns, the woman who had wrinkled feet and ankles, but would still take his hand in the late night for a dance.

“They sound lovely.” Magnus says, and the man, who had near forgotten about them, realizes that he is very much right.

Magnus stays the morning, and the afternoon, and the night. Never once does the man think to ask him to leave. They talk of lands long destroyed and lovers killed and even family that had perished.

“Do you tell all your lovers these things so easily?” The man asks, as he skims his hand over the skin of his lover’s hip. They had retired to bed long ago, but had found ways to keep each other up into the early morning.

Magnus laughs a self-deprecating laugh, and another piece of the puzzle of him falls into place. “I hadn’t for a long time. I had trouble even mentioning my age.” The man chuckles, as a fellow immortal he can understand. “I didn’t start mentioning my past until Alec, because I saw no reason for it. It was over and done with, so what was there to say?”

“You don’t feel this way now?” The man asks.

“No,” Magnus wraps his fingers around the man’s, a small embrace. “It was hard after he died.” And again he is looking away. So strange, the man thinks, for such a seemingly confident man. “I didn’t really know what to do with myself. With my son away, I sometimes had trouble just finding a purpose.”

“They are harder to find than would be expected.” The man whispers, tightening his fingers on Magnus’ fingers.

“I could work, so that was what I did; I could travel, so I did that eventually too. But everything was very superficial. Then I met a woman--”

“It is always a woman.” The man intercuts. Magnus smiles.

“She was missing her husband as much as I was missing mine. We talked about them, how we loved them, how she felt guilt on the days she felt OK, how I could get through the day but not through the night.”

The man encourages Magnus with a rub of the fingers. Magnus gives him a flatlook, clearly on to him. The man turns sheepish; it has been long since he has tried to offer comfort.

“We fell into bed together. It was painfully awkward, mostly something to do with our grief. She was inconsolable in the morning, and I had to hold her and tell her that it was not alright, but it was manageable.” Magnus swallows, his mind somewhere else even as his body is here.

“That sounds like shit.” The man says. He is instantly worried that he might offend Magnus. He has never worried about offending someone before, but this is very clearly shaping up to be something different than he is used to.

Magnus snorts, a soft huff of breath. “Clearly. She cut off contact after that, and I didn’t see her again, but--” Magnus starts, propping himself up on an elbow. The man, who has been listening intently, feels the need to pay even closer attention. “I had memories of her, and she had memories of me. I know all about her husband--his likes, his dislikes, his favorite food, even--though I never met him. Even now, though I’m sure she wants to forget, she’ll keep Alexander in her heart.”

“And you want to keep him alive through others?” The man asks.

“He’s dead.” Magnus says. “There’s no changing that.” His eyes flicker closed, and then they open, and he’s looking right at the man, no shame. “But he told me once that he couldn’t go on not knowing the things I knew. I didn’t understand at first, and then I did. The past, though we pretend like it doesn’t matter, does. Everything we do we do because something in our past makes it seem like we would enjoy it. We tell stories over and over, because what good is a story only told once? We kiss and have sex and fall in love again, but it’s not ever like the way we fell before it. Alec changed me. I would like to honor that.” He says.

The man swallows. “I don’t know what to say.”

Magnus chuckles. “When do any of us?” And they lay their heads down to sleep.

The man knows not to let Magnus go, that it would be a mistake, so he asks him on a date, which Magnus accepts. They go to dinner together; they see plays; they laugh and try to make up stories for all the people they pass, the hundreds of people living within each individual.

Magnus moves in, and the house goes from gray to gold, his shine all over the place. They kiss, have sex, and, most importantly, tell stories to each other. Magnus has so many that he doesn’t know what to do with them all, but his favorites--and the ones most repeated--always seem to be about Alec and their child, Max.

It is a good life.

Weeks pass, and they are happy. Months pass, and they are happy. Years pass.

“You are growing tired of me.” Magnus states one afternoon. The man startles.

“What?”

“You have been looking at the girl at the market, and she has been looking back.” Magnus says this matter-of-factly, and he even smiles as he does it.

“You were expecting this?” The man accuses.

“Eventually.” And that--there is something wrong about that. “You were never one to settle, I could tell from the beginning. That’s fine, but I am.”

And the man hurts, because Magnus can read him better than himself. He jumps into love when it is easy passion, but make it hard, make it a choice instead of a feeling, and he isn't one to stay. He had already felt himself drifting, and he hasn't done anything to stop it.

“I love you.” He says, because he does. He does, even if he is a whimsical man.

Magnus kisses him hard, and they cling as tightly as they can in that single moment, before they are forced to let go. Once again, they have no responsibilities to each other. The man feels relief. The man feels sadness.

He gets together with the market girl a week after Magnus moves out. He is not proud of it, but he is a weak man in some respects, not willing to change the things he doesn’t like about himself.

In the morning, the girl is sitting up by the window, bathing herself in sunlight. What is this, to have lovers that make him understand the beauty of the sun? The man smiles.

“What is that, the expression on your face?” The market girl asks, turning. She is sure she caught something interesting, a story, a good story, before it had been washed away.

“One of my past lovers used to sit by the window just like that.” The man says. In the moment, he is here and not here, in two places at once, even if it is the same room.

“What was her name?” The girl asks.

“His name.” The man gently corrects. “His name was Magnus.”

The girl thinks for a second, her head tilting. “Would you tell me about him?” She asks.

And he does.


End file.
